It is not too hard to repair lath & plaster with original materials. They can still be obtained, but you will have to do some searching to find them. The lath can be repaired and/or replaced, it is simply rough sawn cedar strip, nailed to the vertical wall supports, called studs. Basecoat plaster can be purchased from a building supply company, the local hardware store will not have it in stock. It is quite simple to spread and smooth basecoat, because the final surface does not have to be smooth. Finish coat plaster is the more difficult part of the process. The materials must be of good quality, and in particular the gauging plaster must be dry and free of lumps. You will have to locate a source for finish lime, preferably lime that contains significant magnesium, also known as "dolime". The mineral used to make the best finish lime is dolemite. Be sure to pick up a pound or so of retardant when you purchase finish lime. You will be successful with finish coat plaster if you begin with a small repair, on the order of one or two square feet. Eventually you will acquire confidence in your skills, and be able to do a larger wall repair, say 50 square feet. Plastering a large ceiling will require a combination of skill, strength, and conditioning. Anyone can get the plaster up there, but not everyone will be able to produce an acceptable finish. If you have to do ceiling work, it should be put off until you have gained experience and success at wall repairs. As others have pointed out, your existing plaster might be coated with paint that has lead pigment. Getting this material off the walls, bagged, and into a landfill without exposing yourself to lead dust is possible, but it requires thought and planning. Be aware that vacuum cleaners have an exhaust outlet, and that very fine particles will be ejected from the outlet when the vacuum is in operation. To remove old plaster safely, you must be concerned with the large visible pieces, and also the dust that is too fine to see. Cleanup must be thorough. Young children could pick up the fine particles on their skin, and end up ingesting it when they put their hands in their mouths. The good news is that the raw materials used in plaster repair are not too expensive. If you can supply the labor, the total overall cost might well be under 1000 dollars, even for the extensive repairs you describe above.

Hey All... I wasn't directing it specifically at graywings...but I have seen it so often here that something just finally got to me. I do fiction writing at an ancient history site, and understand that misspellings do occur...a lot of my stuff is written spur-of-the moment at 2A.M., but there I do catch most of mine which are mainly due to speed and keyboard layout. Many, many people here are quite knowledgeable about restoration, so I guess I expect higher standards--earlier that day, I was at a professional restoration site, and saw so many errors that I thought 'there is no way I'd use these people'. The other thing which gets to me is computer-speak and technology--and the fact that a lot of people just assume that since it is high-tech, it is going to function perfectly. Well, that is not true with things like spell-checkers; they are only as good as the person who uses it: it will offer suggested spellings which it thinks are alternates to your typed word, but it also was created by people who assume that if you see the proper word, you will know which one to pick. With our current educational system, the time will soon come when they will likely give up any pretence to grammar or spelling at all and give in to text usages. Finding out that cursive writing is no longer taught in public schools also contributed to my despair--when I heard that, my mouth literally dropped open in shock and it took a bit for me to collect myself. I already knew our math skills were woefully behind the rest of the world, but the fact that we won't even be able to read something not printed was truly astounding. My mother saved a couple of my penmanship books from elementary school as I found out going through her effects, but I should have known back in '98 when I wrote something out at work and one of the other people couldn't figure out even from context that the letter I used to start one sentence was a capital 'Q'.

Please don't casually pull your plaster and replace it with sheetrock. Plaster is the nicest interior finish and *very* expensive to replace. Consider it one of the little luxuries that old house owners get in return for the fuss and bother of owning older buildings. To make a highly satisfactory cosmetic repair over the stain, you can coat it with a stain blocking paint (KilZ is one, so is BIN). You can get these at any paint store. If the leak has lead to a looseness in the plaster, it can be successfully reattached using plaster washers. These are a little harder to find, but not rare and certainly installable by a home owner. If the leak has resulted in a loss of plaster (exposing lath behind) that can also be fixed. A temporary fix is a patch made from a couple of layers of sheetrock and joint compound. A better, and more permanent, repair would be to have a plasterer come (or you could do it, but it takes a little practice) and make a plaster patch. This will not be anywhere near as expensive as pulling the ceiling and hanging sheetrock. And you will still have your plaster which is a wonderful thing to own. Since you are giving so much thought to this potential purchase, I am going add a link to a series of publications put out by the National Park Service that cover a wide range of old-house care and repair issues. There are also excellent books on the care of older buildings, but these have the advantage of being free expert advice, available at all hours of the day. The bulletins cover repairs suitable for buildings ranging from ordinary homes to museum restorations, so the info is very detailed. Pick what level is appropriate for you. The techniques and skills described are easy to understand. I've tackled more than one project with just the instructions in the bulletins to go by. And if you follow their recommendatins, you can also be confident you are treating your old house correctly according to the most widely accepted standards of care. Prospective buyers of old houses are often regaled with tales of other people's "money-pits". If you heart is moved by an older building do not let that dissuade you. Even houses only a few years old begin to need maintenance and repair. The advantage of older houses is that often the orginal materials are much better quality and also often the materials were designed to be continuously repaired as opposed to tossed out and replaced. The main things to check out before you buy an older building (if you plan to live in it right away) are whether the mechanicals (light, heat, water) and the roof are in satisfactory working condition. Structural issues also preoccupy prospective buyers. These can be checked by an engineering inspection, if you are worried. The link below takes you directly to the brief that covers plaster. If you scroll down, you'll be able to link to the full menu of briefs which have info on everything under the old-house roof (including the roof and chimney pots). Since you asked about windows in another post, be sure to check out the brief devoted to window repair, as well. Good luck! Molly~ Here is a link that might be useful: Preservation brief on plaster care and repair

Thanks, Lilac, for the great book recommendation. I'm adding it to my list of "must-gets." Some days, the house seems more like a labor than a love, but I'm sure all old house owners feel that way at one time or another. I have my fair share of "What were they thinking?!" Only in my case I could actually ask (if I wanted to set off family fireworks!) I would dearly love to ask my aunt why she thought the bathroom was the perfect place for her leftover carpet, but I'd rather still be welcome to Thanksgiving dinner.